This collection contains materials on the topic of transgender families from the DIVerse Families bibliography. Transgender stories discuss individuals whose gender identity does not correspond with their biological sex assigned at birth. These stories often describe people’s feelings of discomfort with their assigned sex and the stigma associated with being transgender. Many of the stories depict a person going through the transitioning process or have already transitioned into a transgender man or a transgender woman.
LGBTQ+ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning. Although this is an expansive list, the gender and sexuality spectrum is not limited to these five terms, hence the +. These stories seek to normalize families with gay and lesbian parents and any other family member who is LGBTQ+.
Browse by LGBTQ:
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10,000 Dresses
Marcus Ewer
Bailey longs to wear the beautiful dresses of her dreams but is ridiculed by her unsympathetic family which rejects her true perception of herself.
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A Boy Like Me
Jennie Wood
Born a girl, Peyton Honeycutt meets Tara Parks in the eighth grade bathroom shortly after he gets his first period. It is the best and worst day of his life. Determined to impress Tara, Peyton sets out to win her love by mastering the drums and basketball. He takes on Tara's small-minded mother, the bully at school, and the prejudices within his conservative hometown. In the end, Peyton must accept and stand up for who he is or lose the woman he loves.
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A + E 4ever
Ilike Merey
Asher Machnik is a teenage boy cursed with a beautiful androgynous face. Guys punch him, girls slag him and by high school he's developed an intense fear of being touched. Art remains his only escape. Eulalie Mason is the lonely, tough-talking dyke from school who befriends Ash, a fellow artist and a best friend...a + e 4EVER is a graphic novel set in that ambiguous crossroads where love and friendship, boy and girl, straight and gay meet. It goes where few books have ventured, into gender/queer life, where affections aren't black and white.
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Almost Perfect
Brian Katcher
With his mother working long hours and in pain from a romantic break-up, eighteen-year-old Logan feels alone and unloved until a zany new student arrives at his small-town Missouri high school, keeping a big secret.
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A Princess of Great Daring!
Tobi Hill-Meyer
When Jamie is ready to tell people that she's really a girl inside, she becomes a princess of great daring in a game she plays with her best friends to gather her courage. She's pleased (but not surprised) that her questing friends turn out to be just as loyal and true as any princess could want.
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As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who was Raised as a Girl
John Colapinto
In 1967, after a baby boy suffered a botched circumcision, his family agreed to a radical treatment. On the advice of a renowned expert in gender identity and sexual reassignment, the boy was surgically altered to live as a girl. This book is the human drama of one man's - and one family's - amazing survival in the face of odds.
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As the Crow Flies
Melanie Gillman
Charlie Lamonte is thirteen years old, queer, black, and questioning what was once a firm belief in God. So, she's spending a week of her summer vacation at an all-white Christian backpacking camp. And she can't help but poke holes in the pious obliviousness of this storied sanctuary with little regard for people like herself...or her fellow camper, Sydney.
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Backwards Day
S. Bear Berman
For one day every year on the planet Tenalp, everything is backwards. Everything. So why didn't Andrea turn into a boy on Backwards Day this year? And why did she turn into a boy the very next day?
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Beast
Brie Spangler
After falling off the roof, fifteen-year-old misfit Dylan must attend a therapy group for self-harmers where he meets Jamie, a beautiful and amazing person he does not know is transgender.
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Beautiful Music for Ugly Children
Kristin Cronn-Mills
Gabe has always identified as a boy, but he was born with a girl's body. With his new public access radio show gaining in popularity, Gabe struggles with romance, friendships, and parents--all while trying to come out as transgendered. An audition for a station in Minneapolis looks like his ticket to a better life in the big city. But his entire future is threatened when several violent guys find out Gabe, the popular DJ, is also Elizabeth from school.
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Being Emily
Rachel Gold
They say that whoever you are it's okay, you were born that way. Those words don't comfort Emily, because she was born Christopher and her insides know that her outsides are all wrong. They say that it gets better, be who are you and it'll be fine. For Emily, telling her parents who she really is means a therapist who insists Christopher is normal and Emily is sick. Telling her girlfriend means lectures about how God doesn't make that kind of mistake. Emily desperately wants high school in her small Minnesota town to get better. She wants to be the woman she knows is inside, but it's not until a substitute therapist and a girl named Natalie come into her life that she believes she has a chance of actually Being Emily. A story for anyone who has ever felt that the inside and outside don't match and no one else will understand
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Being Jazz: My Life as a Transgender Teen
Jazz Jennings
Teen activist and trailblazer Jazz Jennings--named one of "The 25 most influential teens" of the year by Time--shares her very public transgender journey, as she inspires people to accept the differences in others while they embrace their own truths.
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Be Who You Are
Jennifer Carr
Nick was born in a boy's body, but has always felt like a girl inside. Nick's family supports him when he says he no longer wants to be called a boy or dress like a boy. "Always remember to be who you are Nick. Remember that we love you, and we are so proud of you." Nick's parents find a group for families like theirs. With their support, Nick expresses a desire to be addressed as "she," and then to be named Hope.
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Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out
Susan Kuklin
Author and photographer Susan Kuklin met and interviewed six transgender or gender-neutral young adults and used her considerable skills to represent them thoughtfully and respectfully before, during, and after their personal acknowledgment of gender preference. Portraits, family photographs, and candid images grace the pages, augmenting the emotional and physical journey each youth has taken. Each honest discussion and disclosure, whether joyful or heartbreaking, is completely different from the other because of family dynamics, living situations, gender, and the transition these teens make in recognition of their true selves.
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But, I'm Not a Boy
Katie Leone
David has a big problem; she is really a girl named Sarah. But nobody knows and everyone assumes she is a boy. When her parents ask why she is so sad, is she brave enough to tell them the truth?
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Carly: She is Still My Daddy
Mary Boenke
Tommy tells the story of his father's transition from Carl to Carly. He learns about other trans persons -- female to male, intersex, crossdressers, and those who live in the middle. The reactions of playmates, grandparents, and the child's mother are represented. Benchmarks of Carly's full transition are built into the story.
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Crossing Lines
Paul Volponi
High school senior Adonis struggles to do the right thing when his fellow football players escalate their bullying of a new classmate, Alan, who is transgendered.
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Dear Herculine
Aaron Apps
A book- length epistolary collection of hybrid-, trans-, and inter-genre prose, DEAR HERCULINE is an intertextual project that recalls portions of the 19th-century French hermaphrodite Herculine Barbin's memoirs, discovered and re- published by Michel Foucault. The medical reassignment of Herculine's gender eventually led to his/her death in February of 1868. Herculine's experiences are set against and interwoven into the author's experiences as an intersexed body through the epistolary form.
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Different Kind of Life
Katie Leone
Michael Davis is a nine year old boy who struggles with living up to the expectations of his father. In order to toughen up, he agrees to sign up for Pee-wee football to learn how to be the man he is suppose to be. During the routine sports physical the doctor discovers a serious condition that turns Michael's world upside down and inside out. Without warning, he is presented with a decision that he never dreamed possible. With his best friend by his side and the support of his mother, the child tries to make a decision beyond his years and discovers his true self in the process.
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Dreadnought (Nemesis #1)
April Daniels
Danny Tozer has a problem: she just inherited the powers of Dreadnought, the world’s greatest superhero. Until Dreadnought fell out of the sky and died right in front of her, Danny was trying to keep people from finding out she’s transgender. But before he expired, Dreadnought passed his mantle to her, and those secondhand superpowers transformed Danny’s body into what she’s always thought it should be. Now there’s no hiding that she’s a girl.
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Freakboy
Kristin Elizabeth Clark
Told from three viewpoints, seventeen-year-old Brendan, a wrestler, struggles to come to terms with his place on the transgender spectrum while Vanessa, the girl he loves, and Angel, a transgender acquaintance, try to help.
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George
Alex Gino
When people look at George, they think they see a boy. But she knows she's not a boy. She knows she's a girl. George thinks she'll have to keep this a secret forever. Then her teacher announces that their class play is going to be Charlotte's Web. George really, really, REALLY wants to play Charlotte. But the teacher says she can't even try out for the part.
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GoblinHeart: A Fairy Tale
Brett Axel
Julep longs to grow up. Julep hopes he grows up to be a goblin rather than a fairy.
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Gracefully Grayson
Ami Polonsky
Grayson, a transgender twelve-year-old, learns to accept her true identity and share it with the world.
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Happy Families
Tanita S. Davis
In alternating chapters, sixteen-year-old twins Ysabel and Justin share their conflicted feelings as they struggle to come to terms with their father's decision to dress as a woman.